


Rosemary

by Dummy_Writer



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 05:12:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5484815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dummy_Writer/pseuds/Dummy_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A passing thought reveals a part of his memories Bond hadn't realised he'd lost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rosemary

**Now I'm thinking maybe, I was stoned**  
**I felt my feet lift off the ground**  
**And my heart was screaming**  
**At my bones**  
**I need you _closer_**

007—no, not anymore— _James_ is in the place halfway between a state of drowsiness and a deep sleep he can barely remember. Behind him Madeleine shifts on the sheets and hums and he can hear a smile in her voice that has his own lips quirking up in response. Her hand rests on his side for a second and then moves up his chest where his own hand joins it and their fingers lace together.

His eyes fly open, alert and he wakes with a start to the realisation that _her hands are wrong._

Only that doesn’t quite make sense. How can hands be wrong, why was there a phantom thought in his mind that ached to become solid, an abstract thought that wanted to tell him exactly how her hand was wrong, how those fingers weren’t quite as--

He sits up suddenly jolting her awake as well, as a painful throbbing takes up residence in his head and the thought is out of his grasp now.

“James?” She says, her soft hand on his shoulder grounding him to reality but he knows now that some part of him finds this touch unbearably wrong but why? “Are you alright?”

“Fine, sudden headache, that’s all.” He smiles charmingly and she believes him.

“Come here.” She says, beguiling and sweet, and frames his face with her hands, fingers rubbing a gentle rhythm into the sides that would be soothing if not for the sudden stab in his head as he wonders again why the touch feels so wrong and  flinches away from her. “James?”

“I think I’ll go take a walk. Get some fresh air.” The words tumble out as his breath grows heavy in his chest and he swallows hard. But Madeleine it seems has been waiting for him to ask for his own space because she smiles serene and pulls away and he walks out the door of their cottage, a stumble in his step that no one would see but he feels anyway and once away he draws long heavy breaths like the hand on his throat has been lifted and he isn’t being choked anymore. The moon is high, the earth under his bare feet soft and dark and he curls his toes in it, the drag of soil in between them a relief.

His hand came up and he stared at his palms in the light of the moon folding his fingers down and the drag of his callused tips reminds him of another set of hands. He closes his eyes and ignores the sound of his pulse in his ears loud and fast, threatening in its cadence and focuses on the phantom touch and maps out the hands of his thoughts, the long fingers awkward and bony, fingertips flat to the touch, the scar for a burn on the palm of the left hand, the rough skin at the wrist from the way his hands were always resting against a keyboard and—

_Q_

 

* * *

 

**As he's in the middle of the street**  
**Then I pretend he is mine to keep**  
**Cars are running fast on both sides**  
**of his head, his eyes say, “ _Closer_ ”**  


All this time and he never realised he was missing something. Now he tries to remember Q and cannot bring his face to mind. He can remember other bits, his voice, accompanied by the tap tap tap of his fingers on a keyboard, remembers the way his smile sounds over the comms but doesn’t remember his face, doesn’t remember looking at it. There is a vast emptiness in his mind as he tries to remember London and his memories from years ago fuse with new ones that lance him through with pain, his brain protesting the exercise he participates in as tries to remember, but cannot. A flash of an image, a straight back dotted with moles, constellations that his own tanned hands map out, the feel of spiny ridges and ribs that expand under his palms. But Q’s face remains a mystery, even the brief meetings that he does remember his eyes seem to slip over him and fix on something else, Madeleine in one and the Aston in the other, only Q’s voice remaining to remind him of who he is.

Oberhauser isn’t even in his life anymore and yet he continues to take and take and _take_. Bond knows he’s already dead of something as mundane as septicaemia but his ghost lingers on

_(Q had called knowing that he’d want to know, of course Q knew, what else did Q know, Bond wonders._

_Does he know of the holes in Bond’s mind?_

_Could he fix them?_

_Would he even want to?)_

Leaving Madeleine isn’t a difficult choice to make, it’s an obvious one. He cannot stay when her touch reminds him of another, someone he doesn’t really even remember. He only wonders if perhaps he should tell her of the machine that could take her painful memories away. She’s running from her past and he wonders if maybe she’ll want it erased altogether, maybe she’d rather forget that she has to run in the first place but no, it would be a child’s solution and it doesn’t quite work does it? Perhaps she’d forget and still hear the voice in her head telling her how wrong it all is like he does.

No, an answer is all he owes her and he gives her the brutal truth without hesitation. She smiles tightly but the line of worry and watchfulness in her shoulder, the one he doesn’t quite notice until it loosens into nothing tells him she is glad as well. She wants a future for herself and he never did quite fit into her fantasies of it.

So he leaves and is on board a plane as fast as humanly possible and wonders if Q is watching, if he’s waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics of The Tiny's song "Closer" used in bold. Here's the [link ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6kPXH9HJvE), everyone go listen to it!


End file.
